The Canadian wake took place that night in an upstairs room in her local in Stoneybatter. Familiar faces turned up from school and college, from the airline (the small handful she would miss, and a few others she wouldn't), from Pride committees, her Italian course, a night class in early French cinema. Deirdre had brought her husband and half a dozen other neighbours. Síle was touched by this turnout, in a city where everyone was always claiming to be madly booked up for months to come. Orla was there, having left the boys with William; beside her, Shay nursed his pint. No sign of Marcus and Pedro yet.
Her old friend Declan was just home after six years in Stockholm, as it happened, and about to take a short-term contract in Glasgow. "We're ships in the fecking night," he declared to Síle with a sloppy kiss. She remembered now that when she'd come out, he'd kept gallantly offering his services if she ever wanted to "give us lads a try."
"What did you miss, when you left?" Síle asked in his ear.
Declan shook his head. "The sad thing isn't the going."
"Isn't it?"
"The sad thing, Síle, is when you come back for a visit and you find yourself bitching about everything. Maybe not the first visit or the second," he said, "but sooner or later you find Dublin isn't home anymore. But nor is the other place. And then you're sunk."
Jael came to rescue her with another martini. "Ah, stop it," said Síle. "I won't remember a thing about tonight at this rate."
"Jael's forgotten everything about our wedding but the hangover," Anton joked, at Jael's side. "Listen, I wish you luck," he told Síle in a more serious voice. "My year in Japan, I felt like a complete feckin' outsider all the time."
"You're such a mammy's boy," Jael told him. "Running back to suck the withered dugs of the Shan Van Vaun!"
She had her arm slung around his shoulder. Husband and wife looked so good together, you'd never know a thing, thought Síle. Did Anton know anything, guess anything about his wife's affair? Maybe he had secrets of his own, unlit chambers in his heart.
Ching-ching: Síle's inner circle were clinking their mobiles and pens on their glasses to hush the crowd.
"And now," said Shay, rising to his feet, "if I might say just a cupla focail about my beloved daughter—in whom I am well pleased, to quote the Man Upstairs—"
A hail of laughter. Orla was recording the whole thing with Síle's digital videocam. Síle couldn't imagine when she'd ever sit down and play it back.
"She's going off, as I'm sure you all know, to throw in her lot with Jude, a remarkable young woman whom we wish was here for this knees-up, and we only hope they'll both zip back over the Atlantic to see us on a regular basis."
Síle grinned at him across the room, willing herself not to cry.
"Now you may think I'm going to blab on and embarrass you all night, Síle, but indeed and I'm not. In honour of your mother, who I'm sure is with us in spirit," he said as matter-of-factly as if Sunita were at home with a bad cold, "I'm going to wind up by quoting a marriage hymn from the Rig-Veda, the address to the bride, and in this case I'm addressing it to both lassies. 'Be ye not parted, dwell ye here; reach the full time of human life,'" he intoned. "And now I'll dry up." With that Shay sat down, to cheers and applause. He leapt up again, to say "—so that the lady herself can favour us with a little speech."
"I will not," Síle protested, but eventually the pressure sent her to her feet. Her mind was blank. And then she began, in familiar professional tones, her hands tilting forward and back. "Ladies and gentleman, if I could have your attention for just a few moments while I explain some crucial safety features of this aircraft..."
Raucous laughter.
"Seriously, now, folks. Jude sent me a quote the other day that I think is applicable," Síle said, hoping she'd get it right. "It's by some Frenchwoman called Madame de Boufflers; I never heard of her before. Apparently she said oui, she'd be perfectly willing to go to England as ambassadress—if she was allowed to take with her twenty or so of her intimate friends, and also sixty or seventy other people who were necessary to her happiness."
More guffaws, though actually Síle found the line more sad than funny.
"So if that's all right with you all, I'm planning to stuff you all into my carry-on at the end of the night, because to be honest, if I could bring my nearests and dearests with me, I could live without the rain, the Guinness, or the Tayto crisps." Wild applause. She caught sight of Marcus's shaved scalp at the back of the room, and gave him a wave. "And now, as none of you love me enough to want to hear me sing, I'm going to call on my friend Marcus to come forward—"
But he shook his head very sharply, and she knew she'd blundered, somehow.
"Go on, boyo!" somebody roared.
"Give us a sad one."
Síle's gaze landed on a musical cousin, who was willing to be persuaded to try out the pub's piano, and her neighbour from two doors down got up and launched into a quavery rendition of "The Parting Glass."
She worked her way through the crowd to Marcus's side.
"Sorry I'm late," he said in a voice so flat it alarmed her.
"No bother," she told him. "Where's Pedro?"
"London."
She did a double-take. "For how long?"
An abrupt shrug.
Síle pulled him out into the corridor for privacy. "He's with James," Marcus told her.
"Who's—"
"Our neighbour, remember?"
"Mr. Organic?" Síle was still bewildered. "You mean—"
"Pedro's never been faithful to one man in his life," said Marcus, gravel-voiced, "but I suppose I deluded myself that I'd converted him."
"Sweetie!" Why hadn't Síle known any of this? Why hadn't she asked? She'd been entirely preoccupied with her own big move. "Is he coming back?"
"Oh, probably." Marcus said it without enthusiasm. "I don't know. We'll see what there is to salvage."
Síle felt an awful dragging sensation. "Was it—was moving down the country too much for Pedro?"
A snort. "I had the impression he adored it. But then, I had the impression he adored me."
"I'm sure he did, both. Does," said Síle with some desperation. "I suppose people and places are similar that way, that you can't tell how long you'll end up staying." Shut your trap, woman, you're not helping.
But Marcus was nodding. "Yeah, but if love's a country, there's no such thing as a permanent visa. Deportation without notice," he added bitterly. "Free fucking trade."
Síle held him very tightly. Then the door swung open, and "There's herself!" She was pulled back into the party, for big hugs, requests for one last coffee or drink before the fifteenth, the endless, maudlin good-byes.
Only when she was going down the stairs with the last few stragglers did she realize who it was that she'd been scanning the crowd for all evening: Kathleen. Not that Síle had contacted her, but she supposed she'd had an absurd hope that some friend might have passed word on, and that Kathleen would have dropped in for a minute, just to say good luck, to offer some kind of pax, or release—as if life were ever that neat.
Shay and Orla came back to her house to wait for the taxi to bring them to the Southside, since the company said it could be up to three quarters of an hour. Síle made them tea and toast. "It's a fascinating story," Shay was saying, "someone from the Iraqi Children campaign sent me a clipping. This fellow bought a tape on how to do bird imitations, and decided to focus on owls. He tried out his calls in the back garden: hoo, hoo, tuwit, tuwoo. And one night he heard an owl hooting back! The two of them sounded identical—at least to his ears—and he was thrilled to find himself talking to a bird, like a boy out of Grimm's fairy tales. Though of course he had no idea whether the two of them were swapping territorial claims, or mating calls, even."
Her father's excitement made Síle smile.
"He kept this up for months, till one night—"
"It turns out to be his neighbour, practicing owl calls," she finished for him.
"What a twit!" said Orla.
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Shay frowned. "You should have stopped me."
"I liked how you were telling it. It did the rounds online, years ago."
"But this article was from a recent newspaper," he objected. Síle shook her head. "It's an urban myth, Dad."
"Ah."
Then she regretted having made him feel foolish. "Which isn't to say it never happened."
"Are you nervous?" Orla asked when Shay had gone upstairs to use what he called the facilities.
"I am of course."
"I worry about you."
"Me? I'll be grand."
Orla was sitting on the very edge of the couch, eyes on the rug. "I know you think you're just like Da," she said hoarsely, "but she's the other half of you, remember."
"Who, Amma?" asked Síle in puzzlement.
"It was the move that did for her, even if it took eight years." Orla didn't look up. "You've always preferred the official version, okay, that's what I tell people myself, because it's none of their business. But I've always wondered, Síle, do you actually believe it?"
Fatigue had Síle in its grip; she wished the taxi would come. "What are you on about? What official version?"
"Oh come on," said Orla. She glanced up the narrow stairs, but there was no sound from the bathroom. Her fingers formed quotation marks. "Our beautiful young mother died of diabetes."
"But she did."
Her sister spoke in a furious undertone. "Tell me this, then: How come she managed just fine for two years after being diagnosed as Type 2, then when Da took us away for a long weekend she just so happened to lapse into a terminal coma?"
Síle's throat hurt. "The signs of low blood sugar aren't always obvious; I read this article..."
"Oh, Síle, cop on." Orla counted on her fingers. "Tremors, sweating, headache, dizziness..."
"Confusion! Confusion is one of the main symptoms—"
"What, with no warning, all at once she was so utterly confused that it never occurred to her to drink some juice? She kept sweets in her purse, in the car, in the kitchen drawer! I remember nicking one and Dad told me off, they were our Amma's special medicine for emergencies."
"These things happen," said Síle, almost stuttering.
"Yeah, mostly to stoned rock stars," said Orla. "Or to depressed immigrants who pack their family off down the country and take a triple dose of insulin."
Síle was shocked into Silence. Then she put her face very close to her sister's. "You're paranoid. You're making this up. You were only five!"
"Old enough to notice that Amma was one of the walking dead. She'd got really fat, lethargic; did you never wonder why there are no pictures of her from the final year? I'd come home from school that winter and she'd still be in bed." Orla spoke in a rapid whisper. "Back in my teens I figured out, there's only two logical options: Either she took too much insulin or she starved herself all that weekend. Maybe she thought if she just curled up in bed and ate nothing, it wouldn't count as suicide."
The word hit Síle like the boom of a boat.
The sound of a flush, the tap running. The sisters stared at each other, unblinking.
Shay came down the stairs carefully. "The place looks much better purged of all your clutter, I must say."
"Doesn't it," she managed to say.
A beep from the street, and she pulled the blind aside: Their taxi was here. Orla hugged her too hard and muttered something about meeting for a last lunch early in the week. Síle pulled away from her without a word.
As soon as she was alone, she rang Jude, and spilled the story out in a shaking voice. "I was so oblivious!"
"You were three years old!"
"I mean, since, looking back. I suppose I loved the smiley pictures of Amma in my head, and love makes you stupid."
"Darlin'—"
"It's not that I want to believe it, but it all makes a sick kind of sense," said Síle, beginning to sob. "She must have felt bits of her starting to crumble off as soon as she landed. She settled in Da's family house, with all her neighbours goggling over the hedges; she turned Catholic, stopped speaking Malayalam, got a little less Indian every year. She must have felt she was withering—"
"Wait up a second. Even if it's true—"
"It has to be true, damn it," she shouted. "Orla says Amma was so depressed she stayed in bed all day. It's just too much of a coincidence that she'd fall into a coma the one weekend we were away!"
Jude's tone was reasonable. "What I want to know is, why would your sister drop this bombshell tonight, of all nights in your life?"
"She was warning me."
"What, that if you emigrate you're doomed to despair like your mom, even though your circumstances are totally and utterly different?"
Síle felt rage like spit between her teeth.
"It just sounds to me like Orla's trying to punish you for leaving."
"You don't understand."
"I—"
"Look, you've won, all right? I'm giving up my whole family for you; don't slag them off as well."
A Silence, as loud as a slap.
"Sorry," said Síle, only half-sincerely.
"I didn't mean to butt in. I'm really sorry about your mom, if it's true."
"Forget it. Thirty-seven years on, what's the difference?"
"You sound tired," said Jude after a minute. "Get some sleep, my love."
"Mm."
Síle turned out the lights, but halfway up the stairs she had to sit down. Her head was a wasp's nest. She wanted to wail aloud for Sunita Pillay, glamorous Air India stew, who'd swapped everything she'd known for a rain-green Dublin suburb: followed her man, gone into exile, surrendered her country and family and friends in the best tradition of womanhood. Who'd done it all for love, and discovered that love wasn't enough to live on after all.
Síle thought of the cave with only one opening, the island with only one harbour, and panic rose like a wave over her head. The snow girl was melting on the hearthrug. Síle seemed to feel the knife along her fingers, and hear the shriek of the birds as they dived.
Place Markers
Our nature lies in movement.
—PASCAL
Pensées
The last yellow leaves were clinging to the branches that slapped Jude's bedroom window: Persephone had gone back under the ground. Jude always longed for the first snow of winter, and here it was.
In the back of a kitchen drawer she came across a set of tiny heavy silver frames. She went next door to ask Dr. Peterson if she had any idea what they were.
"They're place markers, you silly, for name cards. Hold on to them for when you host a big dinner. Maybe you should have one to welcome Síle: a landing party!"
"Maybe in the New Year," said Jude, grinning.
The village had the air of a dressed but empty stage set. Jude kept looking around and thinking, Site will do this, like that, hate that. Sometimes she could see it, it was just about plausible, and neighbours like Bub seemed to take it as a matter of course that Jude's beautiful friend was moving into 9 Main Street. At other moments she thought paranoid things like One winter and she'll be off.
Out shoveling, trying to go easy on her weak wrist, she peered into the bright haze at Rizla coming down the street.
"Hey, you. How's Jet-setter Barbie?"
She hadn't minded the teasing, since Detroit. She knew that the battle was over the minute he'd picked up the phone to summon Síle. "Busy packing."
"You must have worked some voodoo shit on that chick," he marveled. "Emigrating's more than I could do."
"You went all around the world," Jude pointed out.
"Yeah, but I came home. The eagle has landed!"
"So you'd never live anywhere else?"
He shook his head. "Just because I don't hunt or farm doesn't mean this isn't my territory. A Jew's a Jew, even in the Bahamas, but a Mohawk abroad would just be a stray."
"Actually, that's a genealogical term," Jude told him, and when he looked blank she said, "A stray's someone who shows up
in the historical record far from where he started. We fill in forms on a database—young male," she improvised, "Michael Buchanan, sty on left eyelid, died in threshing accident, Seaforth, 1893—and suddenly someone in Ayrshire's tracked down her Great-Great-Uncle Mick."
"Huh. Neat, I guess. By the way," said Rizla, "that settlement came through."
"What settlement?"
He wiggled his right shoe.
"After all these years! When did you hear?"
"A while back. Should be enough to get us unhitched."
"Excellent," said Jude, startled. A while back? When did he make up his mind to do this?
"Your gal'll be happy."
"Mm. Now I just need to come up with my half," she said, visualising her bank manager's face.
He waved his hand. "Nah, the thing's done; I talked to the lawyer last week. Told him I wanted a divorce on the grounds of you being a big ol' bulldagger," he said with relish, "but apparently all we need to do is declare we've been living apart all these years."
She was touched. "You could have bought something you really wanted, like a giant flat-screen TV."
"Believe me, I wanted this." He sang falsetto, miming a shampoo: "I'm going to wash that girl right out of my hair..."
Not that it would, Jude thought. She and Rizla would always be in each other's hair, one way or another. She picked up her shovel again, worked it across the path with a grinding scrape.
"It's next week Síle's landing, eh?"
"Tuesday," she told him, her grin as quick as a fish.
Jude was utterly distracted. She immersed herself in cataloging, but was troubled by tunnel vision: Every document seemed to be about travel or love. Scandalous mixed marriages between Catholics and Protestants; the expulsion of Acadians from eighteenth-century Nova Scotia; bombastic advertisements to persuade prospective settlers that Upper Canada was a new Eden. In an 1822 collection of games for young ladies, Jude happened across a description of what was clearly a yo-yo, but it was called an Emigrant. The painstaking instructions for use concluded, "It would in fact return of itself into your hand, only that a part of its impulse is destroyed by the friction and the resistance of the air." Jude rested her head on her folded arms and thought about that.